


How Rare And Beautiful It Is (To Even Exist)

by PlayingTheGameOfThrones



Category: Star Wars
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fix It Fic, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Pregnancy, Rey’s lineage is not what you think it is, ben is in the world between worlds, finnrose is still canon, lots of force ghosts, lots of lightsabers, or what she thinks it is, really far too many lightsabers, rey goes to rescue him
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:02:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21871267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlayingTheGameOfThrones/pseuds/PlayingTheGameOfThrones
Summary: It is four months after Ben’s death that Rey feels the first kick.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 42
Kudos: 229





	1. How Rare And Beautiful It Is (To Even Exist)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my fix-it fic for The Rise of Skywalker. I hope it is as cathartic for you to read as it is for me to write.

It is 4 months after – that is how she measures time now, before Ben, and after Ben – that Rey feels the first kick.

She is training a group of younglings she found in Mos Eisley when she feels it: the undeniable feeling of an impossibly tiny foot pressing up against her side. She had suspected for months, had felt the first tendrils of a signature in the Force growing steadily week by week inside her – but that was impossible, wasn’t it? She and Ben had never...her cheeks redden at the mere thought of it.

“Stay here,” she tells the younglings, all of whom are attempting – some more successfully than others – to meditate. “I’ll be right back.”

“Yes, Master Rey,” they respond, all of them turning to each other to chatter about whatever younglings like to chatter about. It feels like a thousand years since Rey was their age. She’s not certain she ever  _was_ their age.

Rey ducks out of the hut she’s converted into a ramshackle training facility and into the arid desert air, the binary suns high overhead. She glances behind her to make sure none of the younglings have followed before she sets off toward the small white dome in the near distance that had been Luke Skywalker’s childhood home. It is outside the hut – which she has taken up residence in – that she stops, shuts her eyes, and takes in a deep breath.

“Be with me,” she whispers, reaching out with the Force for a familiar presence. “Be with me.” As she chants, she feels the kick again, this time just a fluttering in her stomach. For a moment, she loses her concentration, but grasps onto the tendrils of Force signature she feels inside her and, along with her own living Force, reaches out with it. “Be with me,” she says one last time.

“I was wondering when you’d figure it out.” Rey opens her eyes to see Leia standing in front of her, wearing a white robe and an amused expression. She has her arms across her chest and a smile on her face.

“Figure what out?” Rey asks, even though she knows exactly what Leia means. She crosses her arms over her stomach, and again feels the fluttering, this time pressing against her arms where they rest on her midsection.

Leia rolls her eyes. Of all the things Rey imagined she would see all those lonely days on Jakku, a ghost rolling their eyes at her was never one of them. “Don’t act stupid,” Leia says, sitting on a bench propped up against the hut. 

“I’m not stupid,” Rey says, taking a seat beside her old master. She knows she’s being petulant, but something about the ridiculousness of the situation she’s found herself in makes her unable to stop.

“I didn’t say you were stupid,” Leia remarks, leaning back against the sun-warmed hut. “I said you were _acting_ stupid .”

Rey huffs, blowing a strand of dark hair out of her eyes. “You clearly already know why I called out to you,” she says, still too afraid to say it aloud.

“I do,” Leia says, and then falls silent.

_She’s going to make me say it,_ Rey thinks.

“Yes,” Leia says. “I am going to make you say it.”

No matter how many times Rey talks to Leia or Luke, she is never used to their ability to seemingly read her mind.

Rey looks up at the cloudless sky, dazzlingly blue. The same color of the sabers Rey buried beneath the sand just a handful of months ago. The same color of the last lightsaber Ben Solo ever held. Rey shuts her eyes against the bright sky. She was relieved when the crystal she chose for her saberstaff glowed a soft, golden yellow the first time she ignited it. Blue hurts too much now.

Beside her, Rey hears Leia sigh. “Rey,” she says in a soft voice. “You don’t have to say it.” Rey opens her eyes to see Leia gazing at her, tears in her eyes. “I know.”

Rey nods, and slowly, she takes Leia’s hand in hers and gently rests it on her stomach. “I feel it,” Rey whispers as the baby jumps against Leia’s hand. “Not just the kicking. I feel...something else.”

Leia nods. “Every living being has a Force signature. Even unborn children. Ben...” her voice trails off, shooting Rey questioning look. In the months since Rey arrived on Tatooine, Rey and Leia have never spoken of Leia’s son. Leia looks at Rey as if asking her permission to continue.

“Please,” Rey says, feeling her lower lip beginning to wobble. “Please tell me.”

Leia nods, swallowing back her own tears. “When I was pregnant with Ben, I sensed light.” A smile graces her ghostly features. “The warmest, brightest light I’d ever experienced. There was darkness too. But he shone brighter than any star. If you reach inside yourself, you will feel that from this child, too.”

Rey shakes her head, blinking away tears. “I don’t think I can,” she says. “I don’t think I’m ready.”

Leia takes Rey’s hand in one of her own. “You have to find him,” she says, her voice urgent, her eyes desperately searching Rey’s face.

“Find him? But...but he’s...” Rey can’t say the word. She doesn’t know if she will ever be able to. 

Leia shakes her head. “No,” she insists. “I haven’t seen my son. I have seen everyone. Even Han. Ben is somewhere else. Ben is _something_ else.”

“Ben is alive?” Rey doesn’t want to believe it’s possible, doesn’t want to give herself hope. But now that she has a child growing inside her with no explanation of how it came into existence, she’s starting to think anything is possible.

“Alive is not the word I would use,” Leia says carefully. “Luke speaks of a place. A place he calls the world between worlds.”

“Is that where Ben is?” Rey can hear the desperation in her own voice, her heart pounding in her chest for the first time since Ben held her for the first time and the last.

Leia smiles sadly. “I don’t know anything for certain,” she reminds Rey. “But I believe you will find Ben if you can find the world between worlds.”

Rey wants to ask more questions, but she watches silently as Leia’s figure melts into their surroundings slowly before completely disappearing.

Rey brings herself to her feet, swaying slightly. Every sound of the desert around her – the snatches of conversations of the younglings, the whirring insects, the distant sound of speeders – fades away until all she can hear is her own heartbeat. And below that, two other sets of heartbeats. There is something...something Rey never thought she would feel again.

_Rey,_ he says, and though she cannot see him, she knows he is there.  _You know what to do. Come find me._


	2. With Shortness Of Breath (You Explained The Infinite)

As Ben’s voice fades and the sounds of Tatooine return, Rey sucks in a deep breath and reluctantly returns to the hut where she left the younglings, knowing she will have to leave them all – possibly for good – soon.

“Hello, Master Rey!” the younglings announce in unison as they bounce to their feet, eager to begin their lesson where they left off.

Rey regards them silently for a moment. There are only about a dozen of them, nearly all of them a different species. She had found them all in nearby Mos Eisley, being looked after by a pair of Force sensitive humans who had found each of them and brought them to the small desert outpost to be safe from the First Order. In their eyes – whether they are humanoid or otherwise – she sees her own staring back at her. It is just as Maz always said – you could see the same eyes in different people, if you looked closely enough. How can Rey leave the younglings here?

But again, the voice calls out to her. _Rey_ , he says, his voice soft but insistent. _Please_.

“Give me a moment, younglings,” Rey tells her pupils, again feeling unsteady on her feet. With shaking legs, she sits on the sand floor of the hut, gently placing her lightsaber beside her. She shuts her eyes and reaches out, all sound fading away.

When she opens her eyes, she is no longer on Tatooine; she finds herself standing on the stormy planet of Exegol, a place she thought – _hoped_ – she had left behind forever. Panicking, she ignites her saber and whirls on her heel to face the destroyed throne of her grandfather – of Palpatine, terrified the threat is not gone, that the evil still lives. But it is not the ravaged visage of the emperor she sees when she turns – it is herself.

And _him_.

Ben.

Everything inside Rey sings to run to him, to pull him into her arms and never let him go. But as she watches, she realizes what she is seeing is not happening – at least, not happening anymore. 

“Ben,” she hears herself say, watching as her face breaks into an enormous smile. The Rey from the past pulls Ben into a joyful kiss – one Rey can still feel the ghost of on her lips if she thinks too much. And then Rey watches as Ben, in turn, smiles, before collapsing to the ground and fading away.

It is too much for Rey to bear. She turns her back on the memory, tears forming in her eyes. But it isn’t the emptiness of the throne room that had greeted her the first time she was on Exegol that greets her now. Instead, standing before her, is Ben.

“Ben?” Rey asks, taking a tentative step forward, desperately wanting to believe what she is seeing but terrified it is a cruel vision. “Is that you?”

The ghost of a smile plays on the corners of Ben’s mouth. “You kept them,” he says, instead of answering her question. “My clothes. They’re in your bag.”

Rey’s hand goes to the strap of the bag slung around her body. “You kept the necklace,” she responds. “I found it in your pocket. When you...when you died.” 

Ben shakes his head, walking towards her. “I didn’t die,” he says. “But I’m not here either.”

“Where are you?” Rey whispers as he steps so close to her she can feel the warmth radiating from his body.

Ben’s eyes drift slowly down from her own to her stomach, where her body is beginning to swell to accommodate the life growing inside it. He raises his eyebrows, and lifts a trembling hand. He looks back up at her as if asking permission to touch her.

“Yes,” Rey says, grabbing his hand in both of hers and pressing it gently against her midsection. “I feel it, too.”

Ben’s eyes fill with tears as he feels the baby’s foot press against his hand. Rey’s heart jumps in her chest. She hasn’t felt this alive since – since the last time she touched him. 

But as Rey watches, Ben begins to fade, just as he did the first and last time they were on Exegol. “ _No_ ,” Rey pleads, reaching out for him. “Please stay.”

Ben shakes his head, now little more than a shadow. “I can’t,” he says. “Please find me.”

Rey is abruptly forced back into the present as her eyes snap open. She finds herself back in the training hut on Tatooine, a dozen younglings staring at her. They are used to their master speaking with ghosts, but this is new to them.

“How long was I gone?” Rey asks, bringing herself to her feet and brushing the sand from her clothes.

“Not long,” a human youngling called Sarai answers. “A few seconds.”

Rey nods, thinking fast. She has only trained Finn a little since he finally admitted to her he was Force sensitive; Jannah she has trained even less. But she knows no one else who could take over for her, and a plan forms in her mind. “We will finish today’s lesson,” she says. “But tomorrow, you will have new masters. There is somewhere I have to be.”

Absentmindedly, Rey’s hand drifts to her stomach, and stays there. 


	3. Show Me Where My Armor Ends

Rey stands at the base of the Falcon’s entrance. Having sent the younglings back to the hut she had built with her own two hands for their lodgings not far from Luke Skywalker’s family home, she knows she needs to go inside to comlink Finn and Jannah. But something stops her from entering the ship. Though the ship used to be her favorite place she had ever been, she has not set foot inside it since she landed on Tatooine four months ago. Rey isn’t certain exactly what it is about the Falcon now that frightens her – she has certainly faced more frightening things in her life than an empty ship. But perhaps that is precisely what is so frightening – the gaping, yawning emptiness of the Millennium Falcon, the ship that used to be so full of life, whether it was Han, or Chewie, or Finn and Poe, or even just the few porgs that had nested there for a few months before making a new home on whatever planet the Resistance had been taking refuge on at the time. But now the Falcon feels haunted to Rey, and often Rey’s only company is ghosts anyway.

“Speaking of ghosts,” a familiar voice says beside her, and Rey turns to see Master Skywalker at her side.

Her former Jedi Master has appeared to her far less than Leia has, which makes sense, Rey supposes, since Rey knew Leia far longer and far more intimately. But if Rey is honest with herself, she knows there is another reason Luke rarely appears to her – he can feel her anger at him, a sun burning hot and bright in the Force, keeping him at bay. She never truly forgave him for what he had done to Ben. She knows he never truly forgave himself either, but after what had happened to Ben on Exegol, Rey has a hard time bringing herself to look in Luke’s face without wanting to draw her saber on him as she had done on Ahch-To so long ago.

“I know you’re angry with me,” Luke says, and Rey rolls her eyes. She’s exhausted of the ghosts always knowing what she’s feeling, what she’s thinking. She wishes they could be more...more human. But this is the life she chose: a kind of exile, with only ghosts, a droid, and a handful of younglings to keep her company. “I’m angry with myself, too.”

Rey snaps her head to look at him, surprised at the sentiment, but still refusing to speak to him.

“You know what you have to do, Rey,” Luke says, his eyes melancholy.

Rey turns back to the Falcon, and, taking a deep breath to center herself, enters, Luke following close behind as she settles into the pilot’s seat and begins to comm Finn.

Before she does, though, she turns to Luke once more, who has chosen to sit in the co-pilot’s seat.

“You’re not going to stop me?” she asks, her hand hovering over the lightsaber pinned at her side.

“Are you planning on fighting a ghost?” Luke asks, smiling. Rey lets her hand drop to her side. “No, I’m not going to stop you. I’ve been speaking with Leia about a place. The world between worlds, it’s been called.”

“Leia told me.”

Luke nods. “It’s spoken of in the books you took from Ahch-To. I tried to find it once. With...with Ben.”

Rey winces. “Please,” she whispers. “Please don’t call him that. You don’t have the right.”

Luke sighs, but he stands up. “You’re doing the right thing, Rey,” he says. “I failed him. You won’t.” With that, Luke was gone.

Rey lets herself sit in silence for a moment, watching her hands shake in her lap, before reaching for the comlink. “Finn?” she asks when he answers. “How fast can you get to Tatooine?” 


	4. Show Me Where My Skin Begins

After comming Finn – who has been living these last few months in Cloud City with Jannah and Lando Calrissian, attempting to find his family – Rey lets herself sink back into the pilot’s chair, suddenly exhausted at the thought of the journey ahead of her. She even allows herself to cry, something she never does, for fear the younglings or a Force ghost or even BB-8 will find her. The sounds of her grief are guttural and animalistic, as if being rolled from her chest by a pair of strange hands, and Rey knows she has held her grief and her sadness and her anger inside for too long. Letting the tears flow freely now, she bends forward and retrieves a soft piece of fabric and a broken rope necklace from beneath her seat. She crushes the black sweater and the necklace to her heaving chest, careful not to let any of her tears stain them. She finds herself wondering if Ben ever, afraid and alone in his stark and cold quarters on the First Order ship he ruled in name only, held this same broken necklace in his hands, wondering where in the galaxy she was, as she wonders now where he is.

After the sobs have subsided and she is left only with a stray tear here and there and a bad case of the sniffles, she shrugs the sweater over her own head. Of course it is too big for her, and she is drowning in the folds of the fabric, but it is comforting to her in a way that nothing else has been since she lost him, the other half of her dyad, the other half of her soul. She thinks again of how cruel the galaxy she lives in is, to reveal to her that she had never truly been alone as she had feared all those years on Jakku, only to immediately rip away the only person who could ever truly understand her, with whom she had never – and could never, because of the way their souls had been formed – be alone.

Attempting to banish these thoughts that only bring her pain from her mind, she closes her eyes and focuses on her breathing. In the warmth of the sweater, she imagines she feels Ben’s body heat still inhabiting it, and for a moment, all the machinery in the Falcon and all the various, faraway sounds of the desert fade away into silence. When Rey opens her eyes again, Ben is sitting in the copilot’s chair, just as she knew he would be.

He slowly reaches forward and brushes a stray tear away from the corner of her eye, and Rey takes a shuddering, deep breath. The touch of his finger on her face feels as real as if he is truly in the Falcon here with her, alive and well. “Is this the first time you’ve cried for me?” he asks quietly, but it isn’t an accusation in the way it would have been coming from anyone else.

Seeing that the question upset her, he turns to another subject, not pressing further. “So, a week and a half and Finn and Jannah will be here?” he asks. “Can you wait that long?”

Rey smiles in spite of herself. “Isn’t the question whether or not _you_ can wait that long?”

With his big, brown eyes locked on hers so that she knows he means every word he says, he answers, “I would wait an eternity for you.” 

Rey, suddenly uncomfortable under the intensity of his gaze, plays with the ends of the arms of his sweater. “But I don’t know how to find you,” she whispers, as if she’s ashamed, as if this is a personal failing.

“Well,” Ben says, absentmindedly plucking the broken necklace from her hands and stroking the fraying rope, “Luke always said that, if you were trying to reach a specific person in the world between worlds, you had to have with you some sort of talisman. Something that the person treasured when they were alive.”

Rey’s head snaps up. “Are there others in the world between worlds? Others besides you?” For some reason, the possibility had never crossed her mind.

Ben nods. “There is an older Togruta woman with me,” he says. “She says she is not truly in the world between worlds; only a version of her is, and a version of me will remain here always, too, even if I myself leave. Everything is so strange here.”

As he’s saying this, he begins to slowly fade away, and Rey reaches out and grasps his hand before he is completely gone. “I will come back for you,” she says, squeezing his hand. “I promise.”

“I know,” Ben says, smiling, and then he is gone. 


	5. I Lean In And Let It Hurt, Let My Body Feel The Dirt

In the week and a half it takes Finn and Jannah to reach Tatooine, Rey is not visited by any more ghosts, though when she is alone in her hut at night, clutching Ben’s sweater and trying to sleep, she can sometimes feel someone’s breath on the back of her neck. In her lessons with the younglings, she is distant and distracted in a way she hasn’t been before, even directly after she lost...well, everything. She knows some of her students can sense it, particularly a young boy from Canto Bight who calls himself Temiri, though he does not remember the name his parents gave him, as they have long been dead. He had been a slave before being brought to Tatooine, and Rey can sense a great well of power inside him, stronger and deeper than he realizes. He asks her if she is feeling alright, but all she can bring herself to say is that she has business in the galaxy and they will have new masters soon. She comforts herself with the fact that this is not a lie.

Rey continues this way in a daze, with memories more real than what is before her eyes, until the night before Finn and Jannah are due to arrive. She finds herself once again tossing and turning on the tiny cot in the room of the hut that had been Luke Skywalker’s bedroom when he was young. Normally, she would attempt to meditate if she could not sleep or was awoken by nightmares, and she would eventually drop off into a dreamless sleep. But this time, she can feel something calling her to the darkened desert outside the homestead.

Frustrated and unable to shut out the bright pulse in the Force seemingly begging her to follow it, Rey swings her legs over the side of the cot and slips her feet into her boots. She clips her lightsaber to the belt she always wears around her waist and shrugs a dark cloak over her shoulders, letting the hood settle over her head, obscuring her face from any curious night-dwellers. Despite the blazing heat of the day thanks to the twin suns, as soon as they set and the three moons began to rise, the desert turned bone-chillingly cold, much like on Jakku. Sometimes Tatooine was so similar to Jakku that she still expected to see the endless tally of days she had scratched into the wall of her makeshift home there. Sometimes she still feels the urge to mark down the days somehow, though this time she does not know exactly what she is waiting for. And, this time around, the changes her body is going through is good enough to measure the passage of time.

Rey steps out of the homestead and into the cold Tatooine night, letting the light from the stars and the three small moons illuminate her way as she surrenders time the pull of the Force and her feet carry her further into the open desert. For her own protection – no one who had spent any significant time on Tatooine would not know about the Tusken raiders, bloodthirsty bounty hunters, and Jawas that haunted the Tatooine desert, looking for slaves and blood – she unclips her lightsaber and ignites it. The yellow blade is still startling to see instead of the familiar blue glow of the Skywalker lightsaber.

And that is when she realizes where the Force is taking her, and what she must do.

She stops at the unmarked grave of the lightsabers, reaching down through the sand with her mind to the two kyber crystals singing out to her. She knows she could just as easily call the lightsabers up out of the ground with her mind, but for some reason that feels wrong. Rey switches off her own lightsaber, setting the hilt down on the ground, and kneels down on the sand beside it. She digs her hands deep in the sand, the upper layer still warm from the heat of the day while the lower layers, closer to the sabers, are cool to the touch. Finally her fingers grasp the fabric bundle she buried the lightsabers in, and she lifts them towards herself, the sand falling away. She unties the bundle, and looks on at the hilts of the sabers she never thought she would see again. She remembers what Ben said about needing a talisman to reach a specific person trapped in the world between worlds, which she had later confirmed for herself by scouting through the Jedi texts she had taken from Ahch-To, so long ago now. The only difference in what Luke had taught Ben and what the Jedi texts said was that the ancient books recommended several talismans, things the person had handled and that had meant something to them in their lifetime.

As she sets Leia’s lightsaber beside her own and ignites the saber that had belonged to Luke and, before him, to his father Anakin, she realizes why the Force has called her to this place: the lightsaber she holds in her hands, its bright blue beam illuminating the empty desert around herself, is the last lightsaber Ben Solo wielded. It is the lightsaber that should have been handed down to him in his childhood, had it not been lost to him and eventually discovered by Maz Kanata. 

She finds herself beginning to tear up when the baby inside her gives a harsh kick to her ribs and the background noise of the desert goes silent. Still unused to this preternatural silence after it was gone from her life for so long, Rey leaps to her feet and whirls on her heels, lifting the lightsaber in a defensive stance.

Ben stands there, his face lit at the same time by the saber in her hands and the three lopsided moons in the sky. He looks at her with a confused expression, and she sheepishly switches off the saber, letting it fall to the sand at her feet. But the look in his eyes does not go away.

“Why do you still wear your hair like that?” he asks, and she realizes when she turned to face him that her hood had fallen away.

She lifts a hand to her head, feeling the messy buns there. “I was too tired to take them out earlier,” she says, despite knowing that is not what he means.

He steps closer, and she watches still and silent as he reaches towards her. She feels his hand in her hair, gently but insistently tugging the bands out of her hair until it falls down to her shoulders. She shivers, both at his touch and at the strange sensation of her hair on her skin.

“Do you remember what I said about the past?” he asks, an insistent, pleading look in his dark eyes.

“‘Let the past die,’” Rey says quietly, the memory as fresh in her mind as if it had happened yesterday, and not nearly two years before. “‘Kill it, if you have to.’”

Ben cracks a tiny smile, and Rey’s heart clenches like a fist. “I was wrong about a lot of things in my life,” he admits as he tugs on a lock of her dark hair with one hand and brushes a stray strand out of her face with the other hand. “But I think I was right about that.”

Rey swallows hard. Her whole body feels aflame, despite the cool of the desert night. “I know you were.”

Ben’s hands drift downwards, towards her stomach, and he looks to her for permission. She nods, and grabs his hand, pressing it to her midsection. She has begun to show in the last few weeks, her small frame not able to hide her condition. She feels the baby press a foot or a hand against its father’s palm, and Ben smiles, before closing his eyes and furrowing his brows. She knows he is reaching for the baby’s signature in the Force, as she has done many times herself.

A few moments pass in silence before Ben’s eyes open, his hand still resting on her stomach. “That’s strange,” he says. “I sense two heartbeats. Not one.”

For some reason, Rey feels herself go cold. “No,” she says. “One of them must be mine.”

Ben shakes his head. “I know your heartbeat,” he says. “I would know it anywhere.” His eyes search hers, and he cups her face in his hands. “You’re having twins, Rey. We’re having twins.” 


	6. We Live And Die Under The Thumb Of Fear

Ben leans forward and kisses Rey before she can fully process his revelation. His mouth is gentle but insistent, and she feels herself groan from deep in her chest involuntarily when he nips at her lower lip. Every nerve ending in her body is alive and blazing with light, and, as she runs her fingers through his soft hair and clutches him so close that every part of him is pressed against every part of her, she realizes she has been dead as long as Ben has. But now, when they are together, they are both finally  _alive_. They are both radiantly and shatteringly  _real._

But as Ben’s hands begin to drift downward, down between her breasts and over the slight swell of her abdomen until he stops at the waistband of her trousers, lightly running a single fingertip below the fabric, Rey feels herself freeze, her nerves seizing up. Ben immediately senses it and stops, letting his hands drop to his sides.

“Are you alright?” he asks, his hazel eyes searching hers. “Did I hurt you?”

_ After all this time, he is still gentle with me,  she marvels to herself.  On Jakku, even later on various rebel bases, no one has ever treated me as gently as the man who was supposed to be my enemy. _

Rey shakes her head. “You could never hurt me,” she says, but she pauses before what she says next, because she is afraid  _she_ will hurt  _him._ “But I’m afraid.”

Ben seems to relax, taking both her hands in his. He knows fear, knows it better and more intimately perhaps than anyone has ever felt anything. And now that he focuses on their bond, he can feel the waves of fear rolling off Rey and crashing into him, a stomach-churning fear that makes the signatures of the twins flutter in his consciousness as their feet press against Rey.

“Don’t be afraid,” Ben says, and he finds himself repeating what he said to her so long ago on Starkiller Base, back when neither of them knew exactly what he meant. “I feel it, too.” He wonders if she remembers. He feels her heart speed up, sending a rush of adrenaline to his own nervous system, and he knows she does. “We’re a dyad, Rey. We’re not alone. We never have been.”

Rey manages a smile, the rising suns illuminating her features and drawing out the brilliant red in her dark hair. “I know,” she says. “But the twins...Ben, I’m not ready. I wasn’t ready when I thought it was _one_ baby.” She shakes her head, strands of her hair caught in an early-morning breeze, so rare on Tatooine. “But _two_? I don’t think I can do it, Ben.”

Ben couldn’t blame Rey. When he was younger, when he still wore the mask of Kylo Ren, he had vowed he would never pass his misery on to another generation. The shadow of Darth Vader has stretched long and dark over his entire family, even when Ben had not known his grandfather, the famed Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, and the terrifying enforcer of The Empire Darth Vader were one and the same. Though he had not found out until the rest of the galaxy had found out along with him, his mother, his father, and his uncle had known, and they were all afraid of young Ben, in whom they saw flashes of Vader in his violent outbursts and uncontrollable power he did not understand. Ben had not wanted any children of his to be poisoned by the legacy of Darth Vader, as he had been. And Rey – Rey has never truly known her parents, has she? She had been left on a hostile planet at the age of five to fend for herself, left to wonder for the rest of her life what had happened to her parents, not knowing their bodies lay in sandy, unmarked graves on the same inhospitable planet. The only family member she had come face-to-face with in her adult life had murdered her. How could either of them raise a child, let alone two?

Ben finds himself without any reassuring words now, and instead just pulls Rey close to him. Their bodies and Force signatures mingle so closely they cannot tell where the other ends and they begin. Rey takes in a deep breath, taking in his scent as he begins, as he always does, to fade away, until he is gone.

Rey is surprised to find Leia in his place, the faint blue glow that always surrounds her diluted by the sunrise. “Leia,” is all she can bring herself to say.

Leia smiles with a tinge of sadness, and Rey knows she understands. “I felt the same way when I discovered I was pregnant with Ben,” she says. “Every mother does.”

Rey wraps her arms around herself as if she can protect the lives inside her from the horrors she herself has had to face. “It’s different,” Rey insists. “I have a reason to be afraid.”

Leia laughs, and Rey feels as if she’s been stung. “You think you’re the only mother to have a reason to be afraid?” Leia shakes her head. “Do you think your own mother was not afraid, when she knew her husband’s father would never stop hunting the life she carried?” 

Rey flinches as if hit. She tries not to think of her parents often. Though they may have thought they were protecting her, they had still sold her, still left her to die on a desert planet that was not kind to anyone, let alone a child. But she has never stopped to think how afraid her mother – and her father – must have felt when they found out about her.

Leia steps closer, retrieving her lightsaber from where it lay in the sand beside Rey’s feet. “Believe in yourself, Rey,” she says as she places the lightsaber in Rey’s hand. “Believe in Ben.” Leia’s voice cracks as she says her son’s name. “The fight is not over yet.” With that, Leia is gone, too.

Rey sighs, looking at the lightsaber hilt in her hand, her own and the Skywalker saber abandoned in the sand a few feet away. As she contemplates them, and the battles that still lie ahead, she hears a ship enter the atmosphere above her head, and watches as Finn and Jannah’s sleek, Bespin-built ship wings towards her.

She shakes off her fear, and gathers up her things. It is time to greet the younglings’ new masters.


	7. Such Careful Words We Can Barely Speak Aloud

Rey watches silently as the sleek silver ship descends from the blisteringly blue Tatooine sky and settles in the sand. Shes steels herself for seeing Finn for the first time in months, and with some effort, manages to pull a smile.  _He’ll want the old Rey,_ she thinks to herself.  _Not whatever I am now_. She hopes Finn and Jannah are not so in-tune with their abilities just yet to be able to sense any presence in the Force besides Rey’s own.

“Rey!” Finn appears on the steps of the ship, his smile nearly as dazzling as the binary suns. To her surprise, Rey discovers herself genuinely smiling as Finn closes the distance between them and wraps his arms around her. “It’s been too long.”

As Finn pulls away, Jannah saunters up behind him and slings a friendly arm around his shoulders. “He couldn’t stop talking about you the whole way here.” She rolls her eyes, but her tone is affectionate. “My little brother is too easily excitable.”

Finn shrugs her arm off. “We don’t even know for certain if I’m your brother. Besides, I’d be older than you anyway.”

Rey shakes her head. “Wait,” she says, holding her hands up. “Lando’s your  _father_ , Finn?”

Finn looks sheepish. “We don’t know yet. Still waiting on test results and records.”

Even as Rey feels her heart swell with happiness for her best friend and she pulls him into another hug, she can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness about her own family. ‘ _They sold you to protect you.’ Who sells a child into slavery to protect them?_

Rey clears her throat and pulls away before her thoughts can bring tears to her eyes, before Finn can feel the waves of sadness rolling off her and tainting her signature in the Force. She hadn’t spent much time with Finn after he discovered his abilities, but she learned enough to know his abilities are empathic in nature. “How is Rose doing?” she asks, a bid to change the subject.

Finn smiles, blushing slightly. “She splits her time between Bespin and the Otomok system these days. She’s helping rebuild her home planet. She’s a regular Leia Organa.”

Rey finds herself smiling in spite of herself. She can’t help but be proud of Rose. As lonely as Rey’s year with the Resistance had been, she had sat up late at night with Rose more than once, even admitting to her what had truly happened on Ahch-To and in Snoke’s throne room, a secret her friend had never divulged to anyone else, not even Finn. Rey had always known her friend would go far.

“And...” Finn starts, but trails off.

Rey lifts an eyebrow. “And?” she prompts.

“And we’re getting married in the spring,” Finn says, lifting his hand up to show off a Haysian smelt ring Rey hadn’t noticed before.

“And a baby on the way!” Jannah exclaims, wrapping Finn in a hug and kissing his cheek, ignoring his protests. “Leave it to Finn to leave out the most exciting part.”

“A baby?” Rey’s hand thoughtlessly drifts to her own midsection, and Jannah looks at her quizzically.  _No_ , Rey snaps to herself as the heartbeats of the twins inside her begin to fill her ears. She gives an almost imperceptible shake of her head, and lets the sounds of the desert return. “Well, let me introduce you to the younglings,” she says, spinning on her heel and walking towards the training hut, not glancing behind her to see if Finn and Jannah follow. 

* 

After the three of them make their rounds greeting the younglings, Jannah excuses herself to return to the ship to comm Lando, leaving Rey and Finn alone.

Rey unclips Leia’s saber from her belt and presents it to Finn. The delicate hilt glimmers a soft gold in the desert suns. “Leia’s saber,” Rey says softly as Finn reverently lifts it from her hands. He ignites it, the saber bathing his awestruck face in blue light. “When I come back, we’ll search for a crystal to build your own.” What Rey meant to say hangs heavy in the air between them –  _if I come back_ – and Finn switches off the saber, his brow wrinkling. 

“Rey,” he says, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. Rey feels her eyes begin to smart, and she ducks her head to hide the tears, though she knows she doesn’t have to, not with Finn – but old habits forged on bloodthirsty Jakku die hard, or don’t die at all. “Are you alright?”

Rey’s first instinct is to lie, to flash a smile and give a friendly shove, breezily changing the subject. It would be so easy to slip into the fun, easygoing Rey – but she’s not sure she knows how to be her anymore. So she lifts her head, tears streaking her cheeks, and looks Finn in the eyes when she admits it for the first time. “I miss him,” she says, her voice catching in her throat. “I loved him.”

Finn lets his hand drop, confusion on his face. “Who? Ren?”

Rey bristles and grits her teeth. “That’s not his name.”

Finn holds his hands up in surrender. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Rey’s heart is pierced through with guilt at her reaction. She shakes her head. “No, it’s alright. Of course you would call him that.”

“Listen,” Finn starts, placing both his hands on her shoulders. “I might never understand why you chose him, but I understand what it means to love someone. I know I would go to the ends of the galaxy if it meant saving Rose.”

Rey opens her mouth to protest – she never told Finn what exactly her mission was, why she has to leave Tatooine – but Finn stops her before she can say a word. “I know,” he says. “Save him, Rey.”

Rey nods her head, finally allowing the sobs to escape her chest as she crumbles into Finn’s chest. He holds her as she trembles, never once letting go until she falls silent.

Finn’s words echo in Rey’s mind as she and BB-8 settle into the Falcon. She arranges her talismans on her lap: Ben’s folded sweater, the Skywalker lightsaber, and the broken necklace. _Save him, Rey_. She closes her eyes, and Finn’s voice transforms into his: _Save me, Rey._

She reaches for the controls, and looks down at BB-8. “Well,” she says to the droid. “Are you ready?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry it took so long for this update! I haven’t forgotten about this story, I promise.


End file.
